Today we’re talking about increasing profits by improving your draft beer system. There are at least six or seven (maybe more?) ways to increase profit in draft beer sales but I’m sharing with you the four easiest ones so you can see quick results.
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Today we’re talking about increasing profits by improving your draft beer system. There are at least six or seven (maybe more?) ways to increase profit in draft beer sales but I’m going to share with you four the easiest ones so you can see the quickest results.
4 Ways:
- Make sure your beer is being served in a clean glass.
There are different definitions of clean – there’s clean and then there’s “beer clean.” Your TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) should be very low. For example, you have one restaurant where chemicals and filters are set up in a certain way and everything comes out perfect. But your other restaurant location might be on a different water system, and because of this, the same set up/ chemicals may not work. So have your chemical guys come out and test your TDS. Then make sure that whatever you’re using to rinse your glassware is actually getting your glasses “beer clean”. - Make sure that you’re serving a good head on your beer.
This is very important! A 16-ounce glass shouldn’t have exactly 16 ounces of beer in it. Beer foam makes beer taste good, protects the beer, keeps it cold, lets your customer know that it’s fresh, and serving a good head on a beer is totally awesome and acceptable. - Put a CO2 gauge on every line
Different styles of draft beers need to get dispensed at different pressures of CO2, thus the need for a CO2 gauge on every line. There are downloadable apps that tell you how much pressure you should put based on the temperature of your fridge and type of beer. You can also talk to your beer reps and your beer distributors. All you have to do is look at the type beer that’s coming out, put a gauge on each line, and have them set where they should be according to the information you got. If you’re getting too much foam, the pressure is too high. If you’re not getting enough foam, it’s too low. And this is exactly why you need a CO2 pressure gauge on every line, so you can adjust each type differently. - We have to measure how much beer were actually dispensing/selling versus how much beer our computer says we’re selling.
There’s only two good ways to do this – one of them is difficult and the other one is expensive:- The difficult method is to get a keg scale. They’re going to cost you a couple to few hundred dollars and function like a floor scale where you put your keg on in it and see how much your keg weighs. This way you know exactly how many ounces of beer are in the keg. Then you can run a report to see how much beer you sold, convert that to ounces, and then figure out if the beer that you’ve dispensed is equal to the beer that you’ve sold. If the numbers don’t match, then there’s some form of theft is occurring, such as over foaming or your staff is not pouring it properly.
- The expensive way is to put flow meters on every one of your lines. Every time beer is dispensed it tells a computer how many ounces were poured. Then all you have to do is compare that number to what your computer says for sales. There are companies that set up the system and software for you.
Final Thoughts:
I strongly encourage you to do at least the first three steps. If you can get to a point where you can do step four – weighing your kegs or measuring the dispensing amount – it will make a huge difference. If you’re a high-volume draft beer house, you have to be doing step 4! Either way, there’s no reason why you can’t do at least steps 1, 2, and 3 to quickly improve the quality of your product and increase your profits.
